The Night Church Part 24

"Like now. You want it private now too, don't you?"

Mike had gotten self-conscious. Jonathan wanted to hug him. "We like having you here, Dad."

He pulled himself up from his lounge chair and drank his gin. When he spoke again his words were sharp.

"I hate to leave on such a sour note, but I got to say it. You kids take care. You're good kids, both of you."

He put out his hands, seemed about to embrace them. "I want my chance at grandfathering, G.o.dd.a.m.nit."

He turned and moved heavily out the door.

They exchanged a glance. "Let's lie down," was all she said. They had only been home a day; there was still the jet lag. Too tired to make love, they contented themselves with a shower together, then lying twined in bed.

When Jonathan awoke it felt late, but it was only ten. He kissed his bride-to-be and probed at her with his inevitable erection. She moaned. He entered her and she sighed, half-awake. It was easier this time. A slight smile came across her face. He began, trying with all his might to make it last, totally engrossed in the astonishing experience of making love for a second time to this very beautiful woman. He had done it once without freeing the serpent. Surely the second time would be even easier.

The phone rang.

"Leave it."

It rang again. And again. Jonathan tried to ignore it but it just wouldn't stop.

Finally he disengaged himself and, as he was the most awake of the two, padded into the living room and answered it. "Oh, hi, Mother." What a magnificent sense of timing. As she spoke Jonathan watched his erection fade.

"You must be careful together," she said in a nervous voice. "I hadn't expected you just to move in with her. You ought to wait until after the marriage. I think you've embarra.s.sed your father." That wasn't very likely. "You're embarra.s.sing me." That was probably true.

"Is Dad there?"

"He just walked in."

"Well, all I can say is we're both adults, and we really would appreciate it if you wouldn't interfere."

She hung up. Jonathan stared a moment at the phone. Slamming down telephones was most unlike Mary Banion. Nor was it like her to pry into his private life.

What role did she have in all this, anyway? According to Mike she had been out of the hotel room at the time the cure was taking place. What role, Mother?

Maybe it was just a coincidence. h.e.l.l, maybe it was all coincidences and hysteria. Jonathan had to find out. Beside that urgent need, spending time lovemaking seemed almost irresponsible.

Jonathan went back to the bedroom. Patricia raised her arms, inviting him to fall into them. But he stayed where he was.

"Patricia, we have to go down to the lab. We have to find out where, we stand in this thing."

"Why? We stand together."

He would sort through the strands of her mind, separating the real from the imagined.

"We have no idea what's really going on. That's the whole problem. We're crazy to lie around here.We've got work to do."

"What can we do? We can't remember clearly, either one of us."

"My lab can help us. The devices there can tell the difference between dreams and memories. If we're hypno-tized, I think we can break through." He did not tell her what he had tried on himself. There was no point. The story would only frighten her, and he didn't need to use 6-6-6 on her. He would control his devices himself.

She pulled him down to her and kissed him with softness and skill. Her early kisses had been rough splashes, but now she had become his geisha. You would not say wh.o.r.e, no, because she was the one who owned. He felt himself en-slaved, taken in a snare so cunning it did not even know itself.

"Please come, Patricia. Please."

"We might hurt ourselves. What if there are things we don't want want to know?" to know?"

"I sense that some terrible drama is being enacted. And we're the main characters."

A slight tension came into her face, visible in the careful set of her lips and the cast of her eyes. Maybe she was a little angry, maybe scared. "Tell me your dreams, Jonathan."

"I told you the Lourdes dream."

"But there are others."

"They disgust me."

"You weren't there when I was hurt. You weren't?"

"I don't know anymore."

She laid her head on his shoulder. "We both choose to believe that you were not responsible. And we haven't got one shred of evidence to the contrary. Aren't we better off leaving it that way?"

"I'd kill myself if I ever hurt you!"

She looked at him. "You're so loyal, Jonathan. You make me love you so very much. Don't you understand yourself at all? You're the most gentle man I've ever known. You couldn't hurt me or anybody else!" He had never seen such fiery conviction in so soft a face.

"What if it was me? What if it was? was? I've dreamed it more than once." I've dreamed it more than once."

"All I want is you, the you that I know and love and trust. That's the Jonathan I want to know."

He could hardly believe what he heard. She was simply overlooking what he was telling her about his dreams. "Don't you think I might have done it-I mean, if I dream about it?"

"When you came into the hospital and looked at me through the window, I knew instantly it hadn't been you." She lowered her eyes. "You were suffering too much."

"And what about Lourdes? My G.o.d, surely you agree we've got got to find out what happened there." to find out what happened there."

She took his hands. When she spoke he had to strain to listen, her voice was so low. She ignored Lourdes. "If it was you, I don't think I can afford to know." She snuggled deeper against him.

He recoiled. This was not working out right. "We've got to find out. We owe it to ourselves, maybe to others as well." He took her by the wrist. "We're going to the lab right now."

"No!"

He would not, could not force her. "Please. You've got to think of others now, not just you and me. What if I'm dangerous? What if we're both part of something terrible?"

"Jonathan, I don't want to know! I just want us to be together, and love each other, and have a family."

"Lord, darling, we are hypnotized. hypnotized. Don't you want to know why somebody has invaded our privacy in this way?" Don't you want to know why somebody has invaded our privacy in this way?"

She touched his face. "You're being a fool."

"I've got to know!"

She closed her eyes, nodded her head. "I hate to hear that. But you really do, don't you? You can't live with yourself unless you know."

"Let's go. Right now."

He did not have money for a cab into Manhattan; they had to content themselves with the F train. They sat on the orange plastic seats in a nearly empty car.

There was no understanding her. On the one hand, she was such a sensitive and moral person-and on the other, almost indifferent to the question of whether or not the two of them were caught up in some kind of dangerous insanity, and unwilling even to consider that a man who wanted her to marry him might be deranged.

He felt like he was smothering, took a deep breath. That was tension. He closed his eyes, listened to the rattling of the train, let his mind wander.

We have a demon between us, she and I.

"This is the stop, honey." They got off at West Fourth Street and went upstairs into the teeming summer night of Greenwich Village.

Down West Fourth they walked past the grim honky-tonks and shoestring restaurants that served the New York Uni-versity community and the endless streams of tourists, past the lopsided row house that contained the Epsilon Rho fraternity, and down Sullivan Street.

As Jonathan and Patricia walked along, one shadowy figure after another stepped forward saying, "Smoke, smoke," and an occasional man held open a bag full of pills. Somewhere somebody played haunting, ethereal ragtime on steel drums.

The turn into Rayne Street brought them at once to another world. The street was dark and quiet.

Tourists and students did not come here. It was too forbidding at night. The streetlights at either end of the block barely penetrated the gloom.

He wished Patricia would walk like an independent human being and not with her head bowed and her hand in his, as if she must go exactly where he led and d.a.m.n her own feelings.

"I'm sorry if I'm imposing on you."

"That's all right."

"It's for both our sakes."

"I just don't want to risk something coming between us. I love you so much."

He led her down the outside stairway to the bas.e.m.e.nt. When he stopped at the door of Room 014A, she stood quietly beside him. When he released her hand to fish for his keys, she twined her own hands together and looked at the floor.

"You're making this very hard for me."

"I know." When she raised her eyes they were full of mischief. "I think you're being an idiot, to tell the truth."

"Well, there's some of the old spirit, at least. Why not look at this as an adventure." He found his key, opened the lab. Inside he flipped the six light switches, flooding the cavernous room with steely fluorescent light. "It might be one, after all. You never know."

The lab had been cleaned up. The busted microcomputer had been replaced and all of the bacteriologicals removed. Even the doorway that had led to the culture lab now led only to a storeroom full of cartons of computer printouts.

Somebody had moved to hide all evidence of bacteria culture having taken place here. That seemed very sinister indeed. He tried to force himself not to speculate about it right now. This wasn't the time to worry about it.

"I don't know any bacteriologists!"

"Jonathan?"

"Sorry. I was thinking aloud." This was his old, familiar workplace now that the other things were gone.

A good laboratory is a delight to work in, and in its intact form his was no exception. "I may be bragging, but please indulge me and admire this place." He gestured. "Just look at it."

"It doesn't make a bit of sense to me."

"My dear, you are looking at the closest thing to a device that can read minds that has ever been designed." He went over to the bench on which most of the digital EEG a.n.a.lyzer was lying under its plastic tarp. "All that she requires is a little juice, a little software, and a little love, and she will tell us exactly-but exactly exactly-what is hidden in the deep recesses of our minds."

"Look, I'm going to say it one last time. This is all a mistake, Jonathan. What we need to do is forget."

"Just do it for me, honey. It'll be over in fifteen minutes."

"What concerns me is that I'll have to remember some-thing I simply can't face. Let Mike find them if he can. I just want to forget. And you should too. Anyway, your machine might lie."

"For my sake, let me find out what it says. I'll never have peace if I don't."

"I wish you understood how the h.e.l.l much I love you, Jonathan Banion. You're part of my soul!"

He hugged her and felt her tremble. "I'm sorry."

"What if we don't like what we find?"

"We have to take that risk? What's the good of living a lie? I don't want that, and I don't think you do either. If we really love each other, we've got to know the truth."

"Even if it destroys everything?"

He held her tight to him. "Let's face that if we have to. The point is to find out the truth, then we'll deal with it."

"You didn't rape me. Not you."

"We have to find that out, among other things.*'

She shrieked at him. " I I do not want to!" do not want to!" She looked at the equipment he had uncovered as if it were a writhing tangle of snakes. Her lips twisted. For a moment it seemed as if she might faint. "I don't even allow myself to think about it. I just know it's there, deep in me, a filthy memory of-of-oh, I don't know what it's of." She looked at the equipment he had uncovered as if it were a writhing tangle of snakes. Her lips twisted. For a moment it seemed as if she might faint. "I don't even allow myself to think about it. I just know it's there, deep in me, a filthy memory of-of-oh, I don't know what it's of."

Of me?

"Darling, I'm going to ask you to lie in the cubicle. And please excuse the mildew." Will your mind tell us what mine would not? He gave the couchette a few swipes.

"I'm doing this for you, Jonathan. Only for you. I'm going on record right now saying it's a mistake."

She lay down. A memory of Mike haunted Jonathan. Mike sitting on the lounge chair, chewing his cigar, his bald head gleaming with sweat.

We're all afraid.

Surely questioning under instruments would work more gently on her mind than 6-6-6 had on his. He hoped so; if he put her through one-tenth of the anguish he had endured he would never forgive himself.

He punched in the Telenet address of the Cray 2000 computer that controlled his software and entered his per-sonal pa.s.sword. The internal prompt appeared on his CRT. The computer was ready. Now he ordered it to load his software from the Corvus Hard Disk Drive sitting beside his terminal. The drive's active light came on for a long mo-ment. When it went off Jonathan knew that the fast, elegant program had been transferred to the Cray.